skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're right, that part was definitely excessive/simplistic.

There are probably hundreds of small start-ups trying to 'fix' mainstream video distribution right now. The point is, their scale is ridiculous compared to the ones I've listed.

For example, in movie streaming, you've got a few biggies: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes - and of course stuff like Ultraviolet, the studios' proprietary solutions for "buy a piece of plastic and be able to stream them from our Windows client". And in the smaller, you've got stuff like Indieflix, KinoNation, Izkara (admittedly more focused on indie content, because of the licensing problems I've discussed above). But none of them can expand to the size of the biggies, because the market is locked.

So, 'low-budget, mildly interesting indie films' is the equivalent of 'cat videos' for movie distribution. It's sad but it's true - every interesting indie flick will be spotted at a festival (e.g. Sundance) and then they'll be contacted by sales agents, whose job will then be to convince the producers that they need DRM, and that they need to sell exclusive rights to this or that entity, and then presto, that content is locked to a single/few platforms and other smallers can't compete.

The reason why mainstream video distribution is locked is more about social than it is about licensing, but I think the situations can be compared.
Your parent comment is referring to the use of camelCase when smashing words together, not to capitalizing every word of a sentence.
I'll admit to making the gaming laptop mistake during my university years. I convinced myself the $1,300 price tag was justified because of the other high computing needs I'd be relying on it for. Turns out, I only ever did those things while I was sitting at my desk at home.

So a year or so after buying it, I now have a dated machine that has horrible battery life and is dysfunctional to use unless plugged in with a number of peripherals and I might as well just have bought a desktop with a notebook for the things I actually did while on the run.

For the average user (who the article is obviously targeting) they'd be hard pressed to justify the price tag of any "gaming" laptop anymore.
Garbage collection took around 40 years to become mainstream. There are lots of important concepts that the industry still ignores. I don't think that 'computer science being ignored by industry programmers for decades' is evidence of anything except the industry's own technical apathy.

Personally, I think the image model is a huge win for a single programmer, while the file model makes it easier to integrate changes from a big team. (There's not really a "DVCS for images" yet.) When I look around, I see that tools that have won tend to support big teams of less-efficient programmers.

So it's not really surprising to me that, by numbers, the file model dominates. That's not an indictment of the image model.

What do you mean by "better"? There are more Corollas than BMW 5's on the streets here, but does that mean they're better, or worse, or better for a particular use case? I'll take the image model for building a fast prototype any day, even if I have to hand it over to a big team writing C or Java for the final product.
I think part of the reason the article is negative is that in much of the industry it's not you building anything, but it's you fixing some garbage that was hacked on by an army of a thousand morons before you into something that isn't really fixable into what management wants.

All the while dealing with people around you who do not understand what you do, whatsoever. This last part is crucial and it is everywhere. I have yet to meet someone who is not an engineer or ex-engineer who actually understands what I do and what I have to deal with not only with my own code (which is far from perfect) let alone code written by some overseas contractor who just got his copy of Java for Dummies so he can learn PHP.
These types of laws are nothing new and are always a reaction to new forms of communications. If Man ever figures out how to communicate via telepathy, there will surely be someone that wants to write a law allowing that channel to be tapped.
Obama & Romney . . . FINANCAIL CLIFF LOOMING
Thanks a lot! It's not my first HN shower, but I'm still having a hard time not caring about negative comments.

I'll definitely keep blogging whatever happens. Thanks again for the support.
Don't trade convenience for connection
Looking at their VPS offerings, their 512MB package with 2 TB traffic costs 6.49 euros (~8.4 dollars) per month. Linode's 512MB offering is at 19.99 dollars. The only upside I can see so far with Linode is you get 20 GB of storage instead of 5 GB with Edis. So what's the catch? Can anyone who is using Edis VPS or otherwise share their experience with us?
Stripe adds OAuth support: Stripe Connect
I'm sympathetic to this argument, to a point.

For database code, executing in the database (ie, stored procedures and the like), table prefixing does make the code more searchable, and reduces the amount of context one needs to grok a single block of code. When you need to refactor, you can quickly find all references.

But as a public face to clients, I find that tbl-prefixing exposes too much implementation detail. Tables and views are both relations, and there's a continuum from physical relation to virtual relation. If I use the same naming convention for both, I can keep my public API constant while iterating on the physical schema. This is very useful to me. Consequently, within the API, I try to keep views simple, and write them to provide table-like performance.
Keeping in sync is even more of a nightmare if you follow the advice to have a desktop Windows PC and a portable Mac.

The advice here could be summarized simply: "Buy what you need, when you need it." In the computer purchasing game, procrastination almost always pays dividends.
A better Android emulator
Einstein's Math May Be Compatible With Faster-Than-Light Travel
SYncing data has become significantly easier than in the days of windows briefcase and other such abortions. Dropbox springs to mind.
I'd like to point out that a great number of the comments here are in violation of the first HN commenting guideline. We are veering away from constructive criticism into aspie-with-a-mean-streak territory.
How to Work with HTML Layouts
I think that Lisp actually strikes a great balance here. The data structures that represent programs are simple and unambiguous, and they serialize to text files absolutely trivially. We should be able to work with code-as-data while making use of text-based persistence and versioning.
Politics have been slowly but surely creeping in to Hacker News.
As for brakes, I noticed a front disc for braking - but front only? That would make an already unstable bike a disaster.
The vision might not be language-specific, but the implementation will have to be. Furthermore, the language parsers will have to evolve as each language evolves. An advantage of existing versioning systems is that they are language-agnostic. Nevertheless, I am excited to see people pushing in this direction. Keep up the good word!
Thanks for the warning! I initially developed this with jQuery, and only after seeing how little of it was needed decided to get rid of it - but I forgot to make all the due diligence. Later or this weekend I'll fix this - but if in the meantime anybody wants to send a fix or a pull request, I'll be glad to use it.
Passbook is intended to collect "the stuff in your pocket", e.g. Payment cards, rewards cards, coupons, tickets, boarding passes, in a handy app that helpfully shows you the right one at the right time.

Once someone has your pass in their passbook you can send updates, such as special deals.

This Quora post covers it nicely: http://www.quora.com/Passbook-iOS-app/How-will-Apples-new-mo...
I'm not sure I want this. eBay need a lot more than a redesign to become popular again. eBay remained the company that has always been without changing. This is not good in a fast environment like this.
Free pdf is available here:

http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/prob/book.pdf

It's always nice to see good things come out of Wash U. (Alum here.)
Facebook Exchange: a (safe) bonanza for brands
I (tried to) read the Beane/Davoudi/Savage paper. I am not a theoretical physicist, but I only vaguely got the feeling that this paper is one of those Markov-Chaining-bot-written papers. I would like to note that it's true: advanced math now looks exactly like the ravings of a madman.
Why you should double your estimates - the planning fallacy
Well, it worked. I know it's down.
Texas Schools Punishing Students That Refuse To Be Tracked with RFID
This looks really great. Very clever!
Tell HN: Namecheap.com won't provide invoices
I've seen namecheap.com endorsed here at HN multiple times, so I think this might be of interest to freelancers/companies in EU.

Namecheap.com won't send you any invoices, due to "technical reasons" (according to their support). All they will send you is a receipt, which is not valid to write off your expenses in the EU.
IEDR seeks gardaí help to investigate attack on .ie namespace
Don't Say Startup
Is there something along these lines that has data for multiple open source projects? I think a lot of folks (myself included) would benefit from something that could provide some guidance, rather than randomly clicking around Github.
Next ZURBsoapbox speaker: Sahil Lavingia, a person of Pinterest
I don't think I quite agree what he's getting at. You can put effort in to anything, but unless it's something you care about (are passionate about), you're not going to want to maintain that effort and actually get good at it. That's where his argument falls apart - the idea that expended effort leads to being good at something which then leads to being passionate about it only works if you expend enough effort to actually get good at it. If you don't care about it, you're likely to quit before you get good.

The idea of "follow your passion" means you should start expending your effort into something you're passionate about. The problem is that many people don't actually know what it is they're passionate about - and those that do don't understand how to turn that passion into an actual sustainable career.

So, I disagree. I say follow your passion.
Galaxy simulation in JavaScript
Complex sql can get long as it is have you not heard of aliaes? Somthing Like.

SELECT a.Somthing,b.someotherthing FROM tblSometing a, tbSomthing Else WHERE a.id = b.id
Don't forget that nearly all Intel desktop CPUs come bundled with some kind of embedded GPU. It's nowhere near as powerful as a separate GPU chip, but it's still able to do OpenCL. The Intel HD4000 GPU may not be state of the art, but it out-performs the CPU for GPGPU-type operations.
The line at the top of the page, for me, says "Undefined".
Firefox 10.0.7, Windows 7.

I debugged it for you - the outerHTML property isn't supported in Firefox < 11. Here's the solution from StackOverflow:

function outerHTML(node){
return node.outerHTML || (
function(n){
var div = document.createElement('div'), h;
div.appendChild( n.cloneNode(true) );
h = div.innerHTML;
div = null;
return h;
})(node);
}
Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4630460
Maybe that's exactly why they are doing it (for free, no less). Just to see what people will do with such a potentialy disruptive service and technology.

Maybe they have bigger ideas for RaspPi's future than I do.
Yes, it would work - but I wouldn't advice doing so:

* If the flicker isn't noticeable, it doesn't matter either way
* If the flicker is noticeable and disturbing, having it only for one version could skew the results in favor of the non-flickering version
I don't think a $2.35M round is really that much for a chip startup. The fact that they even think that they can plausibly launch a chip and some level of supporting documentation, software, etc for ~$3M total, that is a remarkably efficient use of funds. By the way, Kickstarter funds are "cheap" (no dilution & no debt) so anyone who can actually raise money on Kickstarter should do so.
If the iconography was so easy to understand, apps wouldn't need that little "..." button at the bottom right to expand the icons at the bottom of the screen to show icon labels. Minimalism is wonderful, but hiding icon labels by default and forcing single color icons really kills usability.
What does the bar code do anyways when using Bill Guard on passbook?
Why “saving money” and “ROI” are probably the wrong way to sell your product
Seems your professor never heard of the Halting Problem.
Show HN: Microki, a better way to access bookmarks and keep notes
World Mental Health Day 2012
Bad Piggies Malware Chrome Plug-in Infects 80,000 Users
Replace the iMac with a Hackintosh…

Installing a premium OS and not paying for it is one way to save money. Do they have a lifehacker on stealing toilet paper from restrooms too?
Hey there, thanks for what has to be the most insightful and constructive comment of the thread!

I agree with what you're saying. To me, all this is part of a bigger issue which is the "mass culture". That society is only comfortable with having one, perhaps two, providers for every kind of service is similar to the fact that apparently, society needs blockbusters and music hits to find some kind of balance. So that when you meet someone, you actually have common points to discuss.

I haven't yet taken the time to address that issue in blog form, though, because it's really complex and I don't want to half-ass it. I don't think it'll ever be completely solved in this lifetime either.

Part of the social factors that, for example, prevent a mass migration from Facebook or Twitter are the network effects you mention "People go to that site as well because it has the best and most active conversation.". In my opinion, this can be somewhat mitigated by having open protocols for everything. If the discussion happens not on a single platform, but on a set of platforms all talking the same language, you could (in theory) use any client to follow the discussion and it wouldn't even matter where the video is hosted.

Online identity and presence is very hard to define/to bound: e-mail is hard to switch because your e-mail address contains the domain name of your provider (user@provider.tld). It's easier to switch from a web hosting company to another because there you usually control the DNS (except if you're stuck with a subdomain, which sucks) - so for example, I've been able to switch amos.me from ImmediateVPS to Linode to prgmr without any downtime/relocation issues. E-mail is similarly easy to switch if you own the domain name.

But e-mail and personal websites are only part of your online identity: usually, your whole identity is spread among several services: Twitter, Tumblr, HackerNews, Reddit, Flickr. Most people use their homepage as hub/registry to list all their online accounts, but there has to be a better way.

But, again, the thing about open protocols is that reducing the switching cost from one service to another is generally not in the interest of any single provider. Only few companies have convictions strong enough to really make migrations seamless. For others, they're mostly coerced to do so because of privacy laws (example: Google's Data Liberation Front) and give you a .zip of your data, but you can't just seamlessly import it into another service.

This discussion is too vast, really. I'd love to see the death of mass culture and to see a reversal in the centralization process, but, like you, I have my doubts and questions about it.
Do this guys ever sleep? Nice to see they are doing great nice things. It will be perfect when it will come to UK! (SOON RIGHT?)
BillGuard now lets you add your credit cards to Passbook and monitor balances and recent transactions. It also notifies you to any suspicious charges made using your card.

[Disclaimer: I work at BillGuard]
How to build a web server in Chrome (video)
Payments to users is a HUGE deal for lots of services. Really happy to see that.
Maybe I'm missing something but how is post_userid better than post.userid? It's the same length, harder to type, and clutters up your table definitions.

I've been through all of these naming schemas over the years (including the OP's tbl prefix and your table_ column prefix) and honestly they don't help. At best they disambiguate a corner case and make for a lot more typing than is needed. At worst you end up with things out of sync and you have a view named tblFoo with a column named post_blah because you don't want to mess up something that was coded a year ago and needs to keep working.

Keep things simple, format your queries, be consistent and all will work about as well as it's going to work. SQL is ugly.
There's two huge reasons to keep procedures in the database, neither of which has anything to do with ivory towers. They're really about the most basic tenets of good coding practice:

1. Maintainability. It's necessary to put your SQL on the server if you want to keep it well factored. Just like for any other language, oft-repeated bits of SQL code should be factored out into separate procedures and functions. If you're relying on inline SQL, you're forced to choose between habitually violating the DRY principle or resorting to an unmaintainable mishmash of server-side and client-side queries.

2. Testability. The good unit testing frameworks for SQL code are written in SQL, and designed to be used from an SQL development environment (i.e., the database). And just like for any other language, your SQL code should be covered by good tests.

There are plenty of tools out there to help with deployment if it's causing difficulties for you. I recommend using them if that's what it takes for you to be comfortable with the platform.
Which is reasonable, since it's your time. But consider that I have three degrees in CS (BS, MS and PhD). I am employed doing CS research, primarily in systems and high performance computing. And for at least one question on each subject, I would not feel comfortable answering unless I referred to some reference. (Yes, even the architecture and systems questions, despite that being my "expertise": I can recall very little about coherence algorithms.)

The primary value of a formal education is, I think, not that you know a lot of stuff. Rather, it's knowing what you don't know. Knowing just enough to recognize "Oh, this is related to that other thing, I should go and read about that." I'm constantly doing that, as are the people I work with.
as a spaceship traveling at super-light speeds accelerated faster and faster, it would lose more and more mass, until at infinite velocity, its mass became zero.

I remember the same theoretical considerations proposed when Tachyons were popular.
You're right - I had forgotten that only the small nose cone portion of the dragon is capable of re-entry, and only has 10 M³ space available.
>Actually, there has not really been a huge shift in the API or the dev tools.

I had meant dev tools as in the API and SDK code written by Microsoft. There is no big change in the app developer facing dev tools, but internally the kernel has shifted, thus Microsoft developers needed to port the same API to a different kernel, so that's what I meant by a big change.
Keep getting:

Failed to connect to server (code: 1000, reason: Target closed)
Regarding the second half, I find that problematic. Sometimes it's very clear to me that English is not someone's first language, and you can often tell what is by the mistakes they are making (for example, "I have been working here since 3 years" is a common mistake by native German speakers, as it's a direct translation of the equivalent phrase in German). In that situation I find many people are appreciative of stylistic notes, but it's hard to pull off without looking like a grammar [fascist].
I have used it, and it works exactly as advertised. The only think I didn't like is that it put something on my facebook feed about paying somebody, which was gross. I can see why they are trying to get more exposure, but that was a bad move.

Other than that, it's just what it says on the tin.
Who said eBay wasn't popular any more? Maybe compared to its peak (whenever that was), but they still have an enormous amount of stuff for sale via auctions and fixed prices.
Sigh, embed.ly's blog can't handle the incoming traffic. Google has the cache if you want to look at the article - [1].

[1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...

edit: clarification: it's their blog that can't handle the traffic.

edit2: it's embed.ly, not refer.ly, sorry about that.
yeah, we're getting a bit more traffic than expected.. bringing more servers online shortly.
That's pretty much the claim, right? Not that this will determine whether or not the universe is a simulation, but that it may determine that it is-- or at least probably is. Simulationism is predicated on the hypothesis that we could construct a completely accurate simulation of our universe in our universe, as if recursively-simulated universes are possible it becomes vanishingly unlikely that we do not live in one, so demonstrating that that's possible would be pretty important.

Personally, my money's on the universe is a simulation of itself.
Sure, you're limited by money. But if someone magically was able to produce a machine for $100 that was on par with Titan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(supercomputer)) I would still call it a "supercomputer" until it became ubiquitous.
How about it goes even further, i.e. use the webcam to take a snap of the credit card to fill in all card information?
It's almost like they have a team of developers, each working on different features!

Seriously, can't wait till this expands worldwide.
Rather than syncing, you can just treat the laptop as a dumb terminal. tmux & Emacs tramp make editing remote files just about as easy as editing local files. Run an ssh on port 443 so that it's usable where port 22 is blocked.
I'm assuming after a purchase of the OS. Is purchasing an OS and installing it on a computer it wasn't meant for akin to stealing toilet paper too?
No, because the point of college isn't to learn information. It's everything else that matters.
NYC's 375 Pearl to become largest high-rise data center in the world
Even if it is significantly easier than in the old days, it might not easy and reliable enough.

Are you personally using Dropbox to sync data between two machines you regularly use? (An answer to that would help me decide how much weight to give to your comment.)
As someone who recently started using 2 machines on a daily basis Dropbox and git repos for code are more than enough to solve this for me. Anything I need I have on either machine. It's perfect.
I like this hybrid of survey + A/B testing. Interesting approach. I agreed with marbemac, I also confused with the demonstration's UI on your homepage.
Smart. It now sems like it should have been obvious all along.

You want to reduce the size of an image file from X kB down to y kB. Which method will give better-looking results?

1. Dumb, across-the-board by-two resolution reduction?
2. Smart, perceptually-tuned jpeg compression?

We probably should have been using this all along. That we can also benefit from the extra resolution thanks to touch interfaces and high-dpi displays is icing.
Not sure but Linode is fairly expensive compared to other VPS providers. That said, I have just rented a Linode VPS ($20/month) and am very happy with it. The interface for managing it is great and there are tonnes of great features. My old £5 per month VPS was good too but you do get what you pay for (unless you're using AWS).
How many end users know they have a Stripe account? Actually, do any end users currently have a Stripe account?
Agreed. Google is really contacting anyone these days. It's probably obvious that I'm not a good fit there and I still got an e-mail. Most of my friends have, too, so I don't consider it exclusive at all. It was still a good occasion to write down a few thoughts though.